Chapter 6: What My Daughter Left Behind
I told Detective Solis about the phone call.
She wrote it down without reacting, which told me it meant something.
"Did she say who might ask?" Solis said.
"No.
She just said 'anyone.' She sounded — careful.
Like she was choosing every word."
"Did anyone ever contact you?
Before or after the accident?
Ask you to hold documents, a package, anything?"
"No." I paused.
"But I moved house six months after the accident.
I was in their home for those six months, sorting everything.
I donated most of it.
I kept what I thought Lindsey would want one day."
Solis looked up from her notes.
"What did you keep?"
"Photographs.
Some of Daniel's books.
A box of my daughter's things — jewelry, letters, a few small items from her desk." I stood up.
"It's in the spare room."
I brought the box to the kitchen table.
It was a medium-sized cardboard box, sealed with packing tape that I had put on myself eighteen months ago and not opened since.
I had told myself I was keeping it for Lindsey.
The truth was I hadn't been able to look inside it again.
Frank took the tape off carefully.
I didn't stop him.
Inside: a small framed photo of my daughter and Daniel on their wedding day.
A string of pearls she had inherited from her own grandmother.
Three notebooks — her handwriting on the covers, dates going back four years.
A USB drive in a small ziplock bag, labeled in Daniel's handwriting: *BACKUP — DO NOT DELETE.*
Solis looked at the USB drive for a long moment.
"May I take this?" she said.
"Yes."
She placed it in an evidence bag she produced from her jacket pocket.
"The notebooks too, if you're willing."
"Take them."
She sealed the bag.
She wrote something on the label.
Then she looked at me across the table.
"Mrs.
Hartwell.
I want to be honest with you.
If what we think is on this drive is actually on this drive — Gerald Marsh's attorney is going to argue that this evidence was improperly stored, tampered with, or planted."
"He can argue whatever he likes," I said.
"He will also likely argue," she continued, "that you had motive to fabricate evidence.
That you are a grieving grandmother who wanted someone to blame."
Frank turned from the window.
"That's outrageous."
"It's what defense attorneys do," Solis said.
She kept her eyes on me.
"I'm telling you now so you are not surprised when it happens.
And I'm asking you — is there anything about how you stored this box, anything about where it's been or who has had access to it, that Gerald's attorney could use?"
I thought about the spare room.
The locked door.
The single key on my keyring.
"It has been in a locked room in my house," I said.
"No one else has a key.
No one else has been in that room.
I sealed that box myself the day I brought it here, and I have not opened it since."
Solis nodded.
She wrote that down too.
"One more question," she said.
"The USB drive — do you know if Daniel ever mentioned making a backup of his files?
Specifically in relation to the firm?"
I thought back.
Daniel had been careful with documents.
He had once spent an entire Sunday dinner explaining to my daughter why paper records still mattered.
She had teased him about it.
*You're like a man who buries cash in the garden*, she had said.
*At least I know where it is*, he had said back.
"He believed in keeping copies," I said.
"He didn't trust the cloud."
Solis almost smiled.
She closed her notebook and stood.
At the door, she stopped.
"Mrs.
Hartwell.
Gerald said something else when he was brought in.
After the comment about the grandmother." She paused.
"He said, 'She doesn't know what she's sitting on.'"
The door closed behind her.
Frank and I stood in the hallway without speaking.
"He knew about the box," Frank said finally.
"Or he knew about the drive," I said.
May you like
We looked at each other.
"Either way," Frank said, "he's been waiting to see if you'd find it."
